From Homelessness To Greatness x My Interview With Tosh Ernest
My Interview with Tosh Ernest (Black Business Advocate)
What inspired you to take the path of entrepreneurship? Everybody has a story, what is your story?
A little bit about me, I started my career in management consulting, specializing in post mergers and acquisitions organizational restructuring – so how did I get into entrepreneurship… well let’s play a game – you’ve all played this game before right, one of these things is not true. I’m British, I’m a princess, I grew up in a hotel, and I love my job.
And you’re right, I’m not a princess, I’m a Queen! But I did grow up in the hotel my parents owned. Until they didn’t, and as a child it was difficult to understand what happened. Their business was thriving one day, and the next we had moved into poorest neighborhood in our city, a neighborhood I didn’t even know existed. My siblings and I were pulled out of school at breakneck speed, away from all our friends, and now could barely make ends meet.
Now I’m older, I understand that all was not all it seemed. A thriving sales business, does not directly correlate to enough cash to pay your growing overheads, because business was so great you expanded to a new location, and now had to pay your expansion staff, and cover broken core equipment, which may have been surmountable except the market crashed, and the cash dried up and there were no loans to be found. When all these things collide in the same year, it means no home, no savings, no college fund, no inheritance and no getting ahead. Their punishment for daring to dream to get ahead, was being left behind.
Well I say parents – one parent funded – the other mismanaged. So when I tell you that I care deeply about women owning their own businesses, and owning access to their own money, I mean it. This is personal. Not just a job, but a calling a life’s mission. Black women are the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs in the U.S., with nearly 2.7 million businesses nationwide.1 But even with their growing presence in the business world, these women face disproportionate financial headwinds – referencing a recently article where I shared insights
What advice will you give your younger self?
Invest in the markets early, invest now! As a woman of color, I know that I have to build wealth and leave a legacy for generations to come. There is no secret that my path to financial freedom is different from men because of the unique challenges that I have to face as a woman of color. Women live longer and have more career interruptions. Data shows we make less money for the same job [Pew Research Center], we peak our earning potential 10 years before men [CNBC]. When I was younger, I wanted to start investing but didn’t know how. I’m not a financial advisor, but stopped procrastinating and a few years ago walked into a bank and asked to speak to one. The rest is history.
Have you ever raised funds for your business? If yes? How did you raise funds? Where did you seek funds? What is the most amount you’ve ever raised?
No but yes. Not quite raising funds, but entering into equity partnerships with family and friends to fund specific opportunities.
Relationship building – Let’s talk about this! How important is relationship building for you and how did it help your business?
This area is a known deficiency on my part. Full disclosure – I’m a nighttime hustler. Working for a large corporation job by day, working for myself night. Not too much relationship building to be done afterhours during a pandemic, but I know first hand the importance and effectiveness of relationship building in my corporate career, and have the humility to know I need to do better here to advance my business goals.
Do you take risks? What risk did you take? Was it a good or bad risk? What would you do differently?
In the words of YG – “scared money don’t make no money” – but seriously, my first investment property was a huge risk. I’m working through it. Long story short, bad tenants + two year eviction moratorium – however this too shall pass. And I’ve learnt A LOT about local tenant laws. Could start another side hustle as a lawyer at this point!
Was there a time you felt like giving up? What inspired you to keep going?
I was homeless for the first four months of living in America and I definitely felt like giving up. As if in a dream, I pursed the concrete jungle NYC field of dreams, perhaps naively. I packed my whole life into 3 suitcases and journey alone to a country where I had no family or a friend in the world, and nowhere to lay my head or call home. Finances were fraught as even though I did have a job, I didn’t even get paid for the first three months due to some technical glitch with my social security number. I burned through my savings in the first month. The next two months I bounced around NYC sleeping on strangers craigslist sofas at night, always dragging my 3 suitcases unto the subway behind me. I worked grueling 15 hour days in finance during the day, and scoured the internet for a cheap bed at night. My only friends, a burner phone from Duane Reade and a stash of paper NYC subway maps on which I would draw the route back to my random sofa-bed each night. I had no SSN, so technically didn’t exist, also no credit or money for food so instead ate the free snacks at work. I cried my way to work, freshened up in the bathrooms on the ground floor of the building, put on my heels and a smile, and marched into the office. Colleagues would tell me years later that they were none-the-wiser to my homelessness. Why didn’t I quit. Honestly, it was God. There’s no other explanation for it. One day when I ran out of funds, I just sat in a hotel lobby because it was warm, and I had no where else to go. With my suitcases I fit right in. As night fell, I started thinking that perhaps, if I could hide in the toilets overnight, maybe I could emerge again in the morning and they would assume I was a guest. That was the day I received a call that changed everything. A lady I had met through craigslist called my burner phone and offered me a room in her apt for a few weeks. I told her I had no money, she said it was ok, she knew I was in dire straits – that I could stay for exactly two weeks, just to get myself sorted. She was my first friend in NYC, and we’re still the best of friends. In those two weeks the social security glitch was cleared up, I finally had funds!!! I also found an apt and moved out. But without a credit history, I had to pay 3x the deposit to secure, leaving not funds to purchase any furniture in the apt, so I slept on a pile of clothes for another month. Lord have mercy! Thank God he’s brought me this far. I look back now, and I’m so grateful we (me & Jesus) made it this far.
What do you do for personal growth & development?
I get my morning routine right, and almost never break it if possible. I read in the “Power of Habit” that clinical tests show that you leak will power during the day. So whatever you want to do that day, do it before noon! Eat the frog! Every morning before the clock strikes 8, I’ve used my Christian mediation app to focus, completed my Bible reading plan for the day on the YouVersion app, made my bed and worked out for 45mins. The rest of the day comes at me fast, but keeping this routine has provided a lot of balance.
What advice would you give to anyone who is about to embark on the entrepreneurship journey?
Count the cost. Pulling from what I shared in this interview last year
It’s critical to always have a contingency plan and a playbook for a worst-case scenario. None of us are clairvoyant or foresaw a black swan event like the COVID-19 pandemic coming. But this crisis has revealed that preparation is vital. Beyond taking steps to ensure that a business is prepared to withstand a severe economic downturn, preparedness also means doing what it takes to be financially healthy as an individual.
The road to financial health includes revisiting our spending priorities, saving money into emergency funds, and even mapping out expenses in a budget. It’s important that we know what’s coming in and going out every month, spend below our means, and also save money to build wealth over time. These are the first actions we can take that will put us on a path toward financial wellness and position ourselves to be resilient during future crises. For business owners, this crisis is also showing just how important it is to have strong operational discipline around areas like managing cash flow, bookkeeping, maintaining a strong digital presence online, and perhaps most importantly—contingency planning. We launched Advancing Black Entrepreneurs by Chase for Business earlier this year to help Black small-businesses owners in each of these areas.
Are you open to mentorship? How can you be reached? What are your social handles?
I’m open to being mentored – honestly, while my academic knowledge is strong, my practical knowledge has leaps and bounds to go. My entrepreneur journey has been on of stop-starts, grave errors and trial and error. I would love to shadow a successful woman in my field, (property investment) all day every day, but I am not the one. lol